Hamilton
ON/Schenectady NY: Another small chapbook from Gary Barwin’s serif of
nottingham is American poet NF Huth’s 3 Words (2011). In these nine poems, there is such a lovely quality of
repetition and chant, composing poems underneath three little words nearly as
an experiment in riffing and/or word association. The poems read sharp and quick, embracing tangents and qualities of sound, and it’s impossible to know
where the poems might end up. I am fascinated by what she is doing.

Largely autobiographical, Wainio-Théberge
sketches a series of lyric narrative poems, and the strong narrative impulse
throughout is enough that I wonder about his choice for poetry over prose. Why
not compose short stories? Still, what there is in his poems does sharpen once
the narrative begins to fall away and the image clears, composing into a series
of fragments. And yet, he uses similes far, far too often. Why does everything
has to be “like” a thing? Why can’t he simply describe “thing”? There are some
moments here and there, most of which are still buried beneath youth and
inexperience. I would be interested to see where his writing is in, say,
another five years, or ten.

WNDRYN

Wndryn the rain. A season’s baptism

plasters leaves to the asphalt. Wndryn.

The asphalt sweats out its heart. A clod of cold

slips down its road throat. Something moves.

The leaves are transfixed. A twisting

inside the red branch, a twisting of something green.

The asphalt chokes, but it is

saying something – Wndryn.

Wndryn among the pumpkin fields. The corkscrew

of the cut stalk, cracking,

and energy being released

through hairline cracks in pumpkinstalks and clouds.

Where does it go? Rainwater

is easy to scatter. Draw a picture.

The rain falls like nails and sticks to the gravestones.

Wndryn, like graffiti on the hills.

Blair Trewartha’sPorcupine Burning tells the story of an event, as he writes to open
the small collection:

On July 11, 1911,
the gold rush town of Porcupine started to burn. Citizens fled to the lake, or
perished in the buildings they had erected and the bush they prospected. The
two-year-old town was cleared right down to the rock by dawn. The next day,
survivors set up tents and took stock of what remained. With the dense bush now
completely barren, it took only two months for Porcupine to return to a booming
mining settlement.

Much like Wainio-Théberge’s collection,
Trewartha’sPorcupine Burning composes a sequence of narratives, linked through
a shared, historical event. He writes poems amid and between the actions of
historical record, including “Porcupine, Burning,” “Vigil” and “Recovery.”
Honestly, the poems actually become more compelling once the story is told and
nearly out of the way:

BREAKER

In the lake, I am heavy stone.

Compressed weight submerged,

orbiting itself, gravity releasing its spiky grip

until I roll effortlessly, vertebrae separating,

spine snapping into alignment.

I used to call you a lake carp, when we’d fight.

Your slick skin maneuvering through the reeds

like a ghost, jagged rows of teeth

hidden beneath bed sheets.

Even your bite I miss, that sudden punch of breath

at the moment of puncture. The injection of pulse.

Anything is better than this—a stillness more solid

than shore. Your silence an undertow I waltz with blindly.

I’m rarely fond of the poem or poem-sequence
reciting history (whether an event or figure), since so many simply regurgitate
facts already-known, which make me wonder what the purpose is; why not go
straight to the history books instead? It’s a difficult form, certainly, and
one of the few that have worked might include Daphne Marlatt’s Vancouver Poems(1972) or Steveston (1977), or even George Bowering’sGeorge, Vancouver (1972).
Just what is it about the form that compels?

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different? That first book changed my life by, well, by failing to change my life. I thought it would be momentous, and momentously gratifying, but though it was given a good write-up in Publishers Weekly, the press died suddenly and ignominiously, and so then did the book. It was devastating and humbling, so maybe the change consisted of teaching me not to be excessively proud of myself.

In my earlier work I was very careful with each poem in a technical sense. I’m older now, and as I go to pot, so does my prosody: I’ve let myself go to seed, and take that metaphor rather literally – it has been, shall we say, productive. Then again my early poems were written pre 9/11, and my language, like everyone else’s in our culture, has come to incorporate a version of (for lack of a worse word) instress.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I actually came to fiction first. When I was done with college, I was out of work for a while and sat down to write a novel: six hours a day, nothing but writing and some coffee. The result was abject and appalling junk. I’d always loved poetry, but thought it was too good for me. But the humiliation of writing prose ended up teaching me the writerly humility required to take up poetry in, as they say, earnest. As for non-fiction, well, I simply haven’t got the requisite diligence or patience.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I don’t have writing projects. I realize that they’re very trendy, but I disbelieve in them. Anyway, writing for me is a slow process because I’m in no hurry, and can’t think that writing is like running, that the more you do it the better you are. If that were true the most prolific among us would be the best, and it’s just not so (and how would we account for Larkin, Empson, among others?).

Because I have a job that requires my attention at just about all times, I have to write whenever life lets me do so, which is to say when I’m on the train to work, or pushing myself to stay up late into the night with a notebook in my lap. This induces a kind of pertinent reverie, so I don’t mind at all.

When I started out, I revised poems for years. I don’t know how many years I have left, so now I revise them for months. My drafts do resemble final versions; the relationship is genetic, but a poem can seem to grow up before your eyes almost the way a child goes. Then you let it leave home.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
A poem begins for me as a mystery. That’s all I can say about it. Short pieces for me used to get woven into larger work, but now I let them stand alone and fend for themselves. If they’re too weak to stand, I just kill them off. I do somehow seem to know when things are part of what might become a “book.” It’s a question of knowing when and where to begin – and when to leave off.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
The best critique of a poem, in my experience, comes from having to read it in front of other people. If something sucks and you’re not being dense or perverse, an audience will let you know that… vividly. It’s not right to use people in this way, but we all do it, yes? That said, I enjoy doing readings, and try to do them well, because I know how difficult it is to sit through them.

There’s a story that comes to mind. I was in, shall we say, a bad way when trying to write the poems that went into Squandermania. At a reading for Amherst Books, I read aloud the angriest poems I thought I’d ever written. And people started laughing – a lot. At first, I was pretty confused and upset; I figured that I’d misjudged things so badly that I felt I’d better give up writing altogether. But then I realized how right my listeners were: the pathos of personal anger really is comedic. That insight put me on what felt like the right track, after all.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Lord no, no theoretical concerns. I’d have to be a philosopher or scientist or rabbi to address those adequately. It’ll sound portentous (part of the comedy, really), but it feels as if my poems are asking questions. Asking me questions. Like what the fuck do you think you’re doing? I’ve yet to come up with any answers.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I’m sure that the writer has a role in larger culture, alongside all the other kinds of roles that makers and doers have. But I can’t really say what that role consists of, exactly. I suppose the role of a writer is to write, and take his lumps, and then lie down, as Machado says, under the ground.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I’ve never had an outside editor, as such, for poetry. Well, once, the poetry editor of a pretty well-known magazine said he would publish a poem of mine if he could rewrite it. I was so charmed and fascinated that I let him do it. He did a worse job than I did. I wouldn’t let it happen again. Poets are pretty much left to their own devices.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
There’s an Allan Sherman song, “Good Advice,” which nicely points out that good advice is just the same as bad advice. “Good advice costs nothing, and it's worth the price.” (Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MInOApCkA98) That’s about it.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
Critical prose is very hard to do. I adore reading it, and am relieved not to have to write it. Most of what gets called poetry criticism now is really just book reviewing mislabeled, or writing for the entirely understandable purpose of academic credentialing. Mostly, I’m lucky enough to get away with blogging, or writing pieces of what used to be called “appreciation.”

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I don’t have any kind of routine. I do carry all the implements with me, in case there’s a chance to work on something. Otherwise, I’m just living what passes for my life. And so a typical day begins for me with my eyes opening and becoming adjusted somehow to the light… after which I let the coffee and anxiety kick in. The rest, as they say, is hysteria.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When my writing gets stalled, I figure it’s my writing’s way of telling me to shut the hell up. So I stop. And then, unaccountably, it starts up again, particularly thanks to reading a lot (and not just reading poetry). At some point, one will have worked on his very last poem, but they don’t tell you when that moment comes.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Great question! Memphis BBQ.14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
All of the above. But beyond influence, one needs stimulation. The crap that happens every day is the stimulus (I spend a lot of time on public transportation in a vast city, which is quite nicely stimulating). Books come, in other words, from life.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The list changes daily, sometimes even hourly. Louise Gluck says that we feed on other writers and move on. That’s pretty accurate (and vivid). We’re cannibals, aren’t we, when we read and write?

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Once when I was young, one of my mentors, Derek Walcott (the other was George Starbuck) shoved a sheaf of okay-ish drafts back at me and said, “This is fine, but it’s not a life’s work.” He was right about that. So what I would like to have accomplished, and have not yet, is something resembling a life’s work.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Well, I’ve had all kinds of odd jobs in my life already. I’m quite happy doing the work I do now, thank you very much. If I hadn’t been a writer, well, Patrick Kavanagh has the best response. [You won’t be able to use the whole quote, but here it is! - ]

“I am always shy of calling myself a poet and I wonder much at those young men and sometimes those old men who boldly declare their poeticality. If you ask them what they are, they say: Poet.

There is, of course, a poetic movement which sees poetry materialistically. The writers of this school see no transcendent nature in the poet; they are practical chaps, excellent technicians. But somehow or other I have a belief in poetry as a mystical thing, and a dangerous thing.

A man (I am thinking of myself) innocently dabbles in words and rhymes and finds that it is his life. Versing activity leads him away from the paths of conventional unhappiness. For reasons that I have never been able to explain, the making of verses has changed the course of one man’s destiny. I could have been as happily unhappy as the ordinary countryman in Ireland. I might have stayed at the same moral age all my life. Instead of that, poetry made me a sort of outcast. And I was abnormally normal…

I suppose when I come to think of it, if I had a stronger character, I might have done well enough for myself. But there was some kink in me, put there by Verse…

But I lost my messianic compulsion. I sat on the bank of the Grand Canal in the summer of 1955 and let the water lap idly on the shores of my mind. My purpose in life was to have no purpose.”

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
See above. I really have no idea. And yet… my fifth grade teacher - to punish me for doodling rather than taking notes on his lecture about volcanoes - smacked me on the crown of the head with the stone in his bulky class ring, exclaiming "One day, Don is going to be a GREAT WRITER." The gauntlet... almost literally... was laid down. Pete Townshend had his nose for motivation; I had Mr. Kramer.

20 - What are you currently working on?
A book of poems that are one sentence long each – not to be confused with tweets, by the way. In looking over a pile of recent drafts, I realized that almost every poem has maybe one good line in it; why not, I thought, just cut to the chase and keep that one line?

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Tuesday,
December 25, 2012: We are still learning our combined Christmases, coordinating between
my father and sister and her enormous brood (who go around her husband’s
family’s schedule), my lovely daughter, and Christine’s parents. This year, a
shift in schedule allowed us to spend an evening with her father and his wife
in Ottawa on December 22nd, dinner at the Chateau Laurier. Of
course, all four of us managed to forget our cameras in other places (which, for
good or for ill, prevent any real evidence). But it meant we didn’t have to be
in Toronto for 2pm on Christmas Day this year. Relief. Given the 5-plus hour
drive from the farm, we barely made it (through a snowstorm, no less) last
year.

A drive to Toronto on Christmas day from the
farm (via Ottawa, where we returned my daughter home and retrieved Lemonade the
cat) isn’t optimal [see my post on such here], but I always remind myself of
the story Monty Reid told of when his boys were young, and driving the
eight-plus hours on Christmas Day from Drumheller to his mother’s house in
Saskatchewan, two young kids in the back. In comparison, ours seems quite
reasonable. And although the cat didn’t enjoy the drive, he didn’t necessarily
give us any problems, either. He curled up into a quiet, anxious ball.

Ottawa and the farm might have some good snow,
but so far, Toronto is rather green. Once we braved Christmas Day traffic along
the 401, we had a big dinner at her mother Karin’s house with her great-uncle Bob,
cousin Kim, her brother Michael and his lovely fiancé, Alexis [post-dinner photo above: Michael, Karin, Alexis + Christine].

Wednesday,
December 26, 2012: Boxing Day, as Toronto threatens snow, at some point.
We wake and move quite slowly, having been up rather late with dinner, drinks,
stockings, drinks, gifts and more drinks, all while the cat explored the house
and was skittish with the strange, new place and all the strangers within.

Today, also, I received confirmation on my
“Canadian writing” section of the 2013 edition of the annual journal New American Writing. For the sake of
space, they’ve cut my section in half, but it will include new work by Rob
Budde, Stephen Cain, Margaret Christakos, Trisia Eddy, Jon Paul Fiorentino,
Phil Hall, Marilyn Irwin, Nicole Markotić and Andy Weaver (it seems a strange and terrible thing
to send out rejections on Boxing Day). The issue should be out later in the
spring, and also includes a comparable selection of Mexican poetry edited by
Cristina Rivera Garza. In the works for over a year now, I’m very excited to
see the completed issue.

We had brunch with her mother, brother and
fiancé, and her cousin Jeff, his wife Jen and their two small children before
heading off to Burlington to see her friend Kim. Is it possible to enjoy time
in Burlington? I keep thinking not, but there you go.

Going through Burlington and Mississauga is to return
through Christine’s history, and she has, during various trips, shown me a
variety of sites from old schools, houses and workplaces, and the sites of
youthful adventures, both good and bad. Most of our comparisons go like this:

Christine: down here is where I met ____ to see movies.

Me: I was on the farm.

Christine: this is where I worked my first job.

Me: I was on the farm.

Christine: this is where I used to hang out with _____, at this other
mall.

Me: I was on the farm.

After spending a couple of hours in Burlington
with Kim [photo above of Christine and Kim; photo left of myself, Christine, Matt and other Christine] and hearing various stories of youthful hijinks, we drove through blowy
snow back to Mississauga, having dinner at a Pickle Barrel with her friend
Christine and her husband Matt. Given that the restaurant was five levels,
would that be more of a Pickle Silo than an actual Barrel? Mediocre at best, at
least the service was good enough. We wandered the mall where Christine
apparently had her first date, hundreds of years ago.

And why have we not yet watched this year’s
Doctor Who Christmas special?

Thursday, December 27, 2012: After a morning of
wondering what the cat might get up to in Christine’s mother’s house, Christine
and I wandered out into the mounds of snow that fell upon Toronto overnight.

We had tickets to
the Art Gallery of Ontario to see their Frieda & Diego: Passion, Politics and Paintings show, which is in the midst of
its final week. Christine knew much more of their work than I did, knowing only
a bit of Frieda Kahlo and nothing of Diego Rivera, two of Mexico’s most
well-known artists. During his lifetime, Rivera was enormously famous, yet
Kahlo was the first modern Mexican artist to show work in the Louvre.

It was interesting
to see the range of styles the two artists worked with, and the European
influences that worked through a number of paintings, from Botticelli’s
influence upon a particular Kahlo piece, to the Surrealists and Pablo Picasso,
among others. The show presented the two artists as equals, two artists working
side-by-side on their numerous projects, including a number they both did that
included references to the other (including a great deal of self-portraits). A
Christmas present from my lovely wife on our first married Christmas, was she
saying I needed to refer to her more in my work? Or me in hers?

The AGO didn’t allow
cameras in the exhibit itself, so we had to take photographs in other places,
including the small exhibit immediately outside, as a coda to the show, created
by a group of Toronto Island artists known as “Shadowland.”

With nearly an hour
between finishing the Frieda & Diego
show before our lunch reservations at the AGO restaurant, we found another
exhibit that excited, Michael Snow: Object of Vision. Michael Snow has always been one of my favourite Canadian
artists, existing in a number of realms concurrently. Paired with the
presentation of the 2011 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, the exhibit had a number of
large sculptural works, many of which require audience participation. What I’ve
seen of Snow’s work over the years (including a number of pieces at the
National Gallery of Canada), I notice that his work requires, if not outright
demands, a particular shift in the viewer’s perception.

One work, called
“Seated Sculpture” (1982), allows the viewer to sit inside.

My favourite was the
work “Blind,” that I played in for a while. As Snow writes in the “Artist
Statement” in the handout:

Several descriptive analogies relating to Blind come to mind: it’s like a
three-dimensional cross-hatched drawing, an object that monumentalizes fading
in and fading out, and in another film-related resemblance, it’s like a zoom.
The spectator experiences optically what is called “depth of field” in
reference to focusing with the camera lens at different planes. Viewing it
requires the spectator to focus; movie effects happen as the spectator moves.

I stood inside for a
while, taking pictures of Christine wandering through other parts of the
gallery.

Later on, Christine
(at my request) took a picture of me inside the work. Wouldn’t this make the
best author photo ever? For our collaborative project [see a fragment of such here], I’d love for a portrait of each of us inside the work, her on the front
and I on the back (perhaps). Do you think such a thing would be difficult to
achieve, permission-wise? I’d hope not.

From there, we had lunch in the restaurant, a set-lunch-menu with a Mexican-Spanish theme (to go along with the exhibit, obviously), and a Spanish wine as well. Magnificent!

Post-AGO, we hit a
bookstore and spent much money. I picked up some trades of Avengers, Fables, Krazy + Ignatz, and some issues of McSweeney’s and Granta. Had we been here a bit longer, we might have had time to
get a bit of writing done [as we did last year], but unfortunately, not. At
least Saturday, again, will be a work day.

And then back to her
mother’s, exhausted, to a quiet, quiet evening.

Friday, December 28, 2012: We looked at the
snow, and we wondered. And we still drove home, due to the Peter F Yacht Club Christmas party/reading/regatta the following
night.